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Friday, August 19, 2011

Should I Transfer?

Today it was finally confirmed that my family would be moving. Not to another city or country, just to another location in the city.

So a question arose: Should I transfer to another school because of the change in location? From my new home, it would take me about twenty minutes by bus to get to my current school. That's not bad at all, but it's worse than the twelve-minute walk that the new close-to-home school would require. Also, I should mention that the new close-to-home school is a very good and popular school which you can't get in unless you live nearby, and this adds another incentive for me to transfer.

However, obviously there are still a lot of reasons for me to stay at my current school, and therefore I have decided to make a detailed comparison between the two schools. For the comparison, I shall call the new close-to-home school school B for simplicity.

Transportation

As mentioned before, it's more convenient to go to school B. Not only does it take eight fewer minutes to get to, there is also the elimination of the variable bus-waiting time that would be needed for my current school. This makes school B a lot more preferable because I know that it is very annoying to have to wait for a bus for a prolonged period of time.

Also, I should mention that interestingly, none of my best friends (perhaps except one...) and a lot of my so-so friends ride the bus to and from school. What this means is that I'll always have to ride the bus with the so-so friends (I can't just ignore them!!), and this can get very awkward as there'd often be a dreadful silence between me and the so-so friend(s).

Well, I suppose that the second problem will still arise even if I go to school B. And it may even be worse because there will be more people who live nearby. So I can't really compare the two schools with the second problem.

School Rankings/ School Quality

Historically, school B's rankings have always been better than my current school's ranking. They have an average of 39th place out of all the schools in the school board, while my school has an average ranking of 60th place. However, my current school's most current ranking is better than school B's! During 2009-2010, my school was placed 20th, whereas school B was placed 126th.

Also, I must mention that if I stay in my current school, I would continue to be in an enriched program, which is much better than the regular program. And as the ranking is for the entire school, it doesn't really apply if you're in a specialized program.

The difference between the two schools isn't that huge anyway (since there is a total of more than 700 schools). So even though overall school B is slightly better, it doesn't really matter.

Semestered Non-semestered
My current school is a semestered school, whereas school B is a non-semestered school. This makes my current school much more preferable because in a semestered school, I can fast-track courses (i.e., take more advanced courses earlier). Being able to fast-track courses will not only make my timetable much more flexible, but will allow me to take more grade twelve courses (and this would allow me to have a higher average).

Friends
As I am not a very social person, it'd probably take some time for me to make new friends if I go to school B. I only know one person from school B, and I am not even sure if we'd be good friends.

Also, if I do transfer, how will I stay connected with the friends in my current school? Wait, that should be worded differently: How will I be able to avoid staying in touch with them? To me it's quite hard to maintain connections with other people if I don't see them frequently. It's harder for us to have things to talk about, and I just feel that I won't know them any more. Also, it'd be quite troublesome to have to meet up with them, or to constantly reply emails. Basically, I wouldn't want to maintain a friendly relationship with another person if we do not see each other regularly.

So, with this perspective, it's definitely better for me not to transfer.

One Last Thing
Okay, this may sound trivial...

For various reasons, I have developed an awkward relationship with my computers teacher, and it becomes extremely awkward and embarrassing for me when I see her in the hallway (and I see her a lot). I also feel uneasy in the computer programming team (because of the teacher but also because of other things), but I don't know how to find a reasonable reason to withdraw myself from the team.

And if I do manage to withdraw myself from the computer programming team, new problems would be created... argh, I don't even want to think about them!

So I transfer to school B, I would be able to escape the whole thing...

Conclusion
There are advantages and disadvantages to both schools, but I feel that I should stay in my current school. This is mainly because school B isn't a semestered school—it'd be really difficult me to arrange my timetable.

Of course, this isn't certain. But I have a feeling that this will be my final decision...